Edit #2: Yes, there was a bug in the code that was making the potentially clipped part of the input waveform red when zoomed out. I've added a LOT of asserts and everything seems fine now (they failed when I first added them tonight).

Good news! It looks like you found the error! I also noticed the red marking of the waveform yesterday. Almost the entire edge was red. Now it looks normal again. I will test the version for a few more hours, if you don't hear from me anymore, then you are welcome to publish it!

- SCA2 use as backup, feed to output without processing, bypassing normal chain. Use to have FM receiver as backup, and then just feed the full signal to the output.
- uMPX 24x2ch interface
- One bass page

In the past, people have complained about bass in Stereo Tool. Different people described completely different issues with it, which made it very hard to figure out what was wrong. With the new compressor mode, that lets far more transients through (including bass transients), the problem was getting worse, and as it turns out, deep bass was suffocating the mid bass. It took until now - and input from 4 different people - for me to figure out 1. what people were hearing and 2. what the solution was.

The key info that lead to this breakthrough was coming from Wes Keene, who reported that the Stereo Tool clipper after another processor does sound warm - warmth was only missing if it was used with Stereo Tool. And in those other processors he had bypassed the finalc clipper - but not the bass clipper. It was the combination of output from Stereo Tool and the Stereo Tool clipper that caused a lack of warmth.

Long ago, I made some (I thought) very smart bass clipper design that would protect higher frequencies against IMD, moreso from deep bass than from less deep bass. When I tried my trick out I expected it to sound bad - but I never heard any issue with it. That, as it turns out, was not really true.... now that I'm hearing the difference it suddenly sounds much better with this new fix.

So, what I did: I added another bass clipper, but a very simple, traditional one. The same type that all the boxes (even analog boxes) used. No smart stuff to avoid harmonics etc, just a stupid, simple bass clipper with a few modes (hard / soft / ultrasoft). If you use that bass clipper BEFORE the existing clipper, it protects the existing clipper from killing mid-bass frequencies if there's a lot of deep bass present, and the new bass clipper adds harmonics that give the sound more warmth and power. On top of these things, there is actually less IMD in the higher frequencies as well now!

This thing isn't completely finished yet, but it should be usable. Most importantly, I need to make it adjust its threshold to what the existing clipper is doing after it. For now, you'll have to do that manually. Also, the default settings may be way off - I have never even noticed that this mid-bass stuff was missing, so I'm definitely not yet an expert in setting this thing up. So I'll wait for feedback from others for that.

NOTE: Bass EQ
1. This thing should not really be needed because there's already Auto EQ. However Matt Levin insisted that it's useful, especially now that they are playing very old Christmas music, so let's try it out!
2. There are 2 modes: Matt Mode (see checkbox) or Hans mode (unchecked). In Matt mode, the highest band is not adjusted but it is used to determine the levels. So in the last stage, the highest band is in bypass mode, but the other bands respond as if it's working as well. So the bass is adjusted compared to the full spectrum. In Hans mode, the highest band is ignored completely, so if you use 2 bass bands, they are adjusted to match each other, but not the rest of the audio.

New compressor mode info:
About 3 years ago I wanted to redesign the whole compressor based on how water pressure control systems work. The whole idea was to have a compressor that moves fast when it has to, but stands still when it can. And that it would behave 'naturally' - it's something that you could actually build with real components (if you treat water pressure as audio levels).

This appeared to work pretty well. If you play a dynamic track, the compressor acted fast, and if you play an already compressed track it does nearly nothing. This is great - because it doesn't add 'restlessness' to already compressed audio, which would lead to listener fatigue.

Short summary of the rest of this text: It never worked as I envisioned! (And I never even realized that). But now it does!!

Some people have complained about the attack sometimes working too fast - which was mainly noticeable in loud 'S' sounds. The fast attack with much slower release could cause a 'gap' in the audio after the S. But I figured that that was a more or less logical consequence of the the whole act-fast-when-you-have-to idea.

Now fast-forward a bit. Last year, 2 people (Wes Keene and Matt Levin) were working on a preset together with very high compressor ratios and they noticed that in one particular track, a vocal which was originally louder than the surrounding sound actually came out softer. Well, that's not good. It sounds really annoying and broken. After looking into it I found out that my design was actually not - as I had thought - controlling the level based on RMS levels, but based on average sample levels. In most cases that's closer to RMS than peak, but it's not perfect, and as it turned out, in some cases flat out wrong.

So, I added a new mode that actually controls things based on RMS levels. And - different than many traditional compressors - it would control based on RMS levels regardless of whether it's long time or short time levels that you're looking at. Typically, a compressor would use some window over which it calculates the RMS level, and then control the audio based on that. That works great for most content, but if you play a track that for example has a very loud kick every second or so, the RMS window won't help a bit and your long-term level will probably be too low.

So I created a new RMS mode, renamed the old one to Average mode, and thought I was done. But, the problem with loud "S" sounds has gotten way worse! And it was even worse than that: Release was slower than before. So to fix that, I added some "patches": "Big release speedup" and "Big attack slowdown".

This new mode doesn't need that anymore. It's completely symmetrical, and it's still RMS-based, both on short and long time intervals! It still moves slowly when it can and fast when it has to - but not insanely fast if the attack is really big. And release isn't very slow anymore.

Since attack and release speeds are now virtually identical for RMS and Average mode, and you probably prefer RMS levels over Average levels, the new "Symmetric Average" mode is basically useless. I've put it in for now for testing, but I'll remove it afterwards.

The AGC and Auto EQ were suffering from similar issues, and I've fixed those too. There you can just disable "Legacy mode" - if I'm not wrong, the new mode should be better for any purpose than the old one.

Relative non-FM loudness. Switching to preset with -xx dB and then on other with 0dB, stays at previous -xx dB. ..
I guess another settings not included in "audio settings". Wrong multipath settings (from where it pulls this settings when it's not saved anywhere) in my preset and wrong Post-Amp.

Last 64bit standalone is working great, but I noticed a serious delay on the output scope, about 4 seconds.
Is it the software? Or is it my computer? MB's and the rest are realtime.

Hm, no idea. Haven't seen that here - but I have rewritten some code for those scopes to use a lot less CPU if you're zoomed out. If you are at normal (standard) zoom values that shouldn't have any effect.

Last 64bit standalone is working great, but I noticed a serious delay on the output scope, about 4 seconds.
Is it the software? Or is it my computer? MB's and the rest are realtime.

Hm, no idea. Haven't seen that here - but I have rewritten some code for those scopes to use a lot less CPU if you're zoomed out. If you are at normal (standard) zoom values that shouldn't have any effect.

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